“There’s a distinction between calling President Buhari a dog, and naming a pet dog Buhari.”

Thirty-year-old Nigerian trader Joachim Chinakwe is a big fan of his country's current head of state, Muhammadu Buhari. So much so that, he says, he recently decided to name his pet dog after the president.

Pool / Reuters

"After reading [about] his dogged fight against corruption…[I] decided to rename my beloved dog which I called Buhari, after him. I did not know that I was committing an offense for admiring Buhari,” Chinakwe told Vanguard Newspaper.

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Putting Chinakwe back in prison was “to save the suspect’s life” and avoid triggering ethnic violence from his northern neighbors, police spokesperson Abimbola Oyeyemi said. Nigeria often has to perform a delicate balancing act between its 250-plus ethnicities. Tensions frequently erupt in both the Muslim-majority north and Christian-dominated south, despite both religions being spread across the country.

“The average Northerner will feel bad over such a thing. It can cause serious ethnic crisis or religious confrontation because when you are relegating such a name to a certain person, you are indirectly insulting him,” Oyeyemi told reporters.

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